The most popular content still isn't available quickly, cheaply, and legally.

Google made changes to its search algorithm last year in an effort to demote sites associated with piracy, but the entertainment industry continues to worry that search engines are still leading many consumers to pirated content. Just last month, the RIAA President Cary Sherman testified to Congress about the issue.

At the same time, the MPAA put out a study indicating that 74 percent of consumers said they used a search engine "as either a discovery or navigational tool" before they went to domains with infringing content.

That got Mercatus Center researcher Jerry Brito and two of his colleagues thinking about whether there was a relationship between content being legally available and online piracy. In an effort to make the connection clearer, Brito put together a website called PiracyData.org that attempts to track the correlation between what is available legally and what gets downloaded illegally.

Each Monday, the site gathers the most-pirated movies for a particular week as published by the TorrentFreak blog. Then it "mashes up" that data with a site called Can I Stream.it? to check whether those movies are available on subscription-streaming sites like Netflix and Amazon Prime or, alternatively, for digital rental or digital purchase on sites like iTunes, Google Play, and Sony Entertainment Network.

So far, with just three weeks of data collected, roughly half of the most-pirated movies aren't available anywhere online. Even fewer of the movies are available for the two lower-cost options, subscription streaming or digital rental.

Looking at the last week's data featured on the front page of the site today, six out of 10 of the most pirated movies can be purchased while only four out of 10 can be rented. None can be streamed on subscription sites. Looking at three weeks of data—the 30 most-pirated titles including repeated titles—only seven were available to rent. None were available for subscription streaming at any time.

"There's no way to draw causality from this," cautioned website creator Brito. "But it's interesting. If people are turning to piracy because they can't find it legally, there is something the movie industry can do—they can collapse the release window."

While that would involve a major change to the movie industry's current business model, it is essentially asking Google to change its business model in a big way. And the industry is pushing those changes in Congress, said Brito.

An MPAA spokesperson contacted for this article noted that the industry is already going to great lengths to make more content than ever available online legally, but that alone hasn't dented piracy.

"The Walking Dead was pirated 500,000 times within 16 hours despite the fact that it is available to stream for free" on AMC's website, noted MPAA spokesperson Kate Bedingfield. "Our industry is working hard to bring content to audiences when they want it, where they want it, but content theft is a complex problem that requires comprehensive, voluntary solutions from all stakeholders involved."

The previous two weeks show less legal availability for popular movies than the most recent week.

The MPAA noted that some of the data, such as the notation that Pacific Rim is not available for rental, is inaccurate. "More than half the films they cite are in fact available to stream or download, including films they claim are not," stated Bedingfield.

In a follow-up post on "launch day glitches," Brito states that while they haven't been able to confirm it, "we believe that it [Pacific Rim] was added at some point after we checked, and therefore this does not appear to be an error on our part."

Of the four movies that are totally unavailable, two of them appear to be at the tail end of theater windows. None are available online, but checking Fandango for my downtown Oakland zip code (94612) shows that Elysium is still playing at two nearby theaters. The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones is playing only in faraway Antioch, almost a 40 mile drive.

The other two movies are totally unavailable for now. Amazon shows a DVD release date of November 5 for White House Down and November 19 for 2 Guns.

Running Google searches on the movie titles shows that the search results are mostly legitimate and official links. For example, when I searched "White House Down," none of the first 20 links appeared to offer the content. Rather, they were links to official studio marketing, as well as to informational sites like Wikipedia, Rotten Tomatoes, and IMDB. In one search, an easily accessible and apparently pirated stream of White House Down was the ninth link on the front page. But when I searched several minutes later, the same link was three pages back.

Googling "White House Down watch online free," however, shows very different results. Nearly all the front-page links either do stream the movie or at least purport to offer free access to the movie somehow. The front page includes three notations of links already taken down by DMCA requests.

Over time, Brito's PiracyData.org may shed light on whether there's a correlation between online availability and piracy. And on one point, both Brito and the MPAA agree: lack of online availability doesn't justify piracy.

"The Walking Dead was pirated 500,000 times within 16 hours despite the fact that it is available to stream for free" on AMC's website, noted MPAA spokesperson Kate Bedingfield. "Our industry is working hard to bring content to audiences when they want it, where they want it, but content theft is a complex problem that requires comprehensive, voluntary solutions from all stakeholders involved."

Anyone actually looked at the quality of AMC's stream? It's garbage. Maybe people wanted a copy to watch in decent quality, along with a legit viewing on AMC. This notion that a download equal a lost legitimate sale or viewing needs to stop. As does, well, we offered it legally (with all sorts of hoops to jump through, and in ass-like quality), but nobody wanted it. If your choices are, garbage quality legit stream, or a high quality MKV from a torrent somewhere. What are you going with?

I am a person who has no problem getting a digital purchase/rental even if I have seen, or own a physical version of the movie. Although if I already own it, I probably really like the movie to begin with. From my usage of Xbox and Google for digital purchase, and perusing of the other available digital distribution companies, I have found that they are not all equal.

One distributor will have the HD version for Purchase and rent while the other may only have the SD version. Another may have both, but only for purchase or rent, and one may have any other mix, including not having it at all. to me that causes a problem. Even if it is a short term issue, i.e. exclusive to a distro for 3 months, it is still a hassle. I am not going to manage more than one or two digital distros, and since the media is not compatible, so I cannot take my Xbox videos over to Google and switch to that one if it becomes my favorite. This is especially true since the media is still riddled with DRM, so I cannot even store it to play it on my preferred player, it has to be a player compatible with that distro.

Personally I think the target of the study was wrong. I think the study should have been availability. Nothing can stop or block piracy, but availability can help reduce it, but then again so can cost. So I honestly feel that everyone is looking around the things that can help reduce piracy and bring that so called "lost revenue" back to the movie industry.

I think the one thing that people always leave out is the fact that even with digital rentals and streaming options, there will always be a person who can't afford it. It doesn't fit into their budget and they don't want to go without. It's not an excuse for their actions, just a reality that no one seems willing to accept.

It'll surely curb it but there are people who just won't ever do so and that's what they need to take into account. Make it a part of the business model instead.

"The Walking Dead was pirated 500,000 times within 16 hours despite the fact that it is available to stream for free" on AMC's website, noted MPAA spokesperson Kate Bedingfield. "Our industry is working hard to bring content to audiences when they want it, where they want it, but content theft is a complex problem that requires comprehensive, voluntary solutions from all stakeholders involved."

Anyone actually looked at the quality of AMC's stream?

After reading the claim about being able to stream for free, I tried to go look even though I was 99% sure there would be a catch that would prevent me from seeing anything. And what do you know: "Not available from your location."

I'm guessing MPAA spokesperson Kate Bedingfield is not aware that Earth doesn't quite end at US borders.

It's a combination of price and availability for me. Pacific Rim was part of a program called "Super Ticket" here in Canada - for roughly $35 you got the movie ticket in theatres, as well as some bonus content and an early release for the digital copy.

Considering the price of a ticket is about $12 here, $23 for a digital copy (even if it does come with exclusives) is cost-prohibitive for me.

So I spent my $12 in the theatre.

I've wanted to watch it since... and I'm not going to spend $5 to rent it (HD) or $20 to buy it (HD)... so I'm just skipping it for now. I'd love to see it again at home but there are plenty of other things to watch.

So again, price and availability. If I could rent it for a buck? Done. If I could buy it for $5... or even $10? Yeah, I might do that. But right now I'm spoiled for choice, so I don't really need to fork out for what I perceive to be a bad deal.

I *hate* streaming. I much prefer having a hefty mkv file that sits on my drive.It's just entirely a better experience.

My experience has been the opposite. Sometimes it's codec problems, sometimes the file index isn't done correctly so skipping in a file takes forever, sometimes the video playback just isn't smooth for no good reason (plenty fast computer reading from plenty fast disk, tried with several different players). With streaming I think I can count on one hand the number of times I've actually had issues. It just almost always works, and if it easy to access then much more on demand thne keeping files on your HDD. Now that being said, I did download The Walking Dead premiere simply because I didn't know they would stream the episode or not. And once I did know I still watched the physical copy because, hey, why watch commercials when I don't need to? But I certaintly won't be downloading the rest of the season, because the hassle just isn't worth it, and objectively, I know that I need to contribute to the production costs of the series by watching their irritating commercials. But of course this is all in the YMMV territory.

I'm not ashamed to admit I pirate some stuff. I do it when I cannot obtain what I want to watch at a reasonable cost, and also because some of the content I want to watch is simply not available in Canada.

The number of things I pirate has dropped dramatically since Netflix came to Canada. It dropped even more when I signed up for unblock-us and could get access to Hulu+, Vudu, US Netflix, and other on demand streaming/rental services. I rarely pirate now. The very few 'must see now' movies, I will usually rent from Redbox (also just came to Canada). If it's not available there, I check Vudu, CinemaNow, etc. If the title is available to rent, I do that. I have no problem dropping $2-7 on something I want to see. If none of those options are available, I torrent it.

Lesson that the media companies should learn from this. Make your stuff available to rent or stream and a lot of us will do that. Some money is better than no money. If you deny me the ability to watch something I want to see, without dropping $15-20 to purchase a movie I will only watch once, the pirate bay is waiting.

After reading the claim about being able to stream for free, I tried to go look even though I was 99% sure there would be a catch that would prevent me from seeing anything. And what do you know: "Not available from your location."

This is important.

I live in New Zealand. As far as I am aware, there is not a single legal download/streaming service available in this country.

So our choices are...well, there aren't any really. It's piracy or nothing.

I used to think this was very clearly the obvious solution, but I've also noticed that many people I know pirate items they have no intention of purchasing, and I do not not how prevalent that attitude is, or if this data reflects that.

If you heard the Lone Ranger was a terrible movie, but you still wanted to see it, you might be tempted to pirate it. After viewing, if you realized it was indeed pretty bad, you'd have no intention of purchasing it, but you'd be listed in this data as a pirate in the pre-legal access window, even though you would have never paid for it directly (iTunes rental, etc. Netflix and the like notwithstanding).

Even back in my days of piracy, that was my attitude as well. Movies I really wanted to see, I'd go to in theaters. If they were only so-so, I'd just grab them at home so I wouldn't have to waste time going to the theater, watching previews, driving home, and possibly finding out the movie wasn't worth my money.

Same old content owner dribble.. Hey guess what? There is a market for your product, but you've over valued it to the point where most people aren't willing to pay. Kinda reminds me of those guys who go on Dragons Den or Shark Tank asking 1mil for their shitty startup company & get laughed out on national TV. Maybe it would be good for these MPAA guys to pitch their business model on those shows and see what Kevin O'Leary has to say?

If I have to, I'll watch the other two. Hulu+ has commercials, and Amazon Prime has a weird buggy player sometimes and doesn't play nice with Android or Chromecast or W8 apps (easy multitasking and media controls what?)

Any other streaming site is invariably garbage. Nickelodeon, AMC, Comedy Central, etc. All garbage. Even HBO GO.

Saying "Walking Dead is available on AMC" doesn't mean anything. It's ANOTHER DAMN SITE. Do you really need to pay your IT department to homebrew something to get some trivial extra ad sale or merchandise sale? Or do you care more about "piracy" (copyright infringement)? Pick one (hint: Netflix), and stop complaining.

DRM is my number one block to buying into the digital releases. I like having a file that I can share across all my devices with no hassle like logging in or all the device limitations that are currently in place. If the movie industry would just set the standard with one file format, that will work with all your devices I think it would significantly reduce piracy.

Basically for the movie industry to win against piracy, they need to beat the convenience of going on a torrent site and just downloading the file.

I started out as a legitimate, big purchaser of music and films. I bought things like Back To The Future on tape. When it came out on DVD, there was no discount, either I paid for the convenience, or I pirated it, so I bought it again. Then when it came out on BluRay, I either paid for the same thing a third time ... or just download it. Let's say that I didn't pay for a 3rd copy of the same thing (but I did pay for two copies of the series).

When you add that legitimate copies also have 5 minutes of rubbish that can't be skipped, you start to woder why you ever bothered paying in the first place.

The problem is that once you open yourself up to the option, you find it convenient. Quick release dates, available at home, no mess, no fuss...

Alternatvies: media, iTunes and streaming. iTunes is a joke (low quality copies, small hard drives, USB2 transfer speeds, etc). Media is clumsy as I don't want physical disks (storing/retrieving/scratching/etc). Streaming means that I use up gobs of bandwidth repeatedly - and I get the occasional stall.

So, as a conscientious consumer, I contacted some of the owners of the things I was downloading and asked them if I could pay them directly. I never heard back from any of them.

This is an industry that let the genie out of the bottle by forcing the public to offer easy/convenient distribution channels that beat anything they offer. Also, they still won't provide me with what I want. How about a membership of $10 / month where I can download what I want. It only works while I have a membership...

No it doesn't! As the content distributors, you have have the power to decide how the content is distributed.

Expanding on this. One of the things I would love to see is for the MPAA backed studios to take to heart the old AllofMP3.com mentality to content. Offer videos in any resolution and container the user wishes, with the codec of the users choice, and charge based upon size of the file (just like Allof MP#, files would be encoded upon user demand). That way, a user could choose a 480/720/1080p video in say AVI/MP4/MKV container with the codec of choice, and thus pay accordingly.

Offering customers infinite choice and pricing option seems to me so simple. Yet the studios are just so blind to the obvious.

And be spoiled on the internet? And miss out on all the fun of participating in online discussions? You clearly know nothing of what watching movies and tv shows is all about. They are global experiences.

If it's not available in my country, I'm going to watch it through less than legal means. It's that simple.

After reading the claim about being able to stream for free, I tried to go look even though I was 99% sure there would be a catch that would prevent me from seeing anything. And what do you know: "Not available from your location."

This is important.

I live in New Zealand. As far as I am aware, there is not a single legal download/streaming service available in this country.

So our choices are...well, there aren't any really. It's piracy or nothing.

Buy media when it comes out?

As of right now, most media doesn't come out at the same time as they do overseas. We're often months behind. There are huge amounts of money to be made by the first company that can push legitimate streaming video that includes up to date shows and films to NZ (and other countries in the same situation). Unfortunately, licencing agreements with the local media outlets make this an extremely difficult proposition.

I think we're actually going to have to wait for the current generation of media moguls to die before there are any changes to the current distribution model.

If I have to, I'll watch the other two. Hulu+ has commercials, and Amazon Prime has a weird buggy player sometimes and doesn't play nice with Android or Chromecast or W8 apps (easy multitasking and media controls what?)

Any other streaming site is invariably garbage. Nickelodeon, AMC, Comedy Central, etc. All garbage. Even HBO GO.

Saying "Walking Dead is available on AMC" doesn't mean anything. It's ANOTHER DAMN SITE. Do you really need to pay your IT department to homebrew something to get some trivial extra ad sale or merchandise sale? Or do you care more about "piracy" (copyright infringement)? Pick one (hint: Netflix), and stop complaining.

Good lord HBO Go was the bane of my existence when I decided I wanted to see what the Game of Thrones hype was about. I remembered that HBO is paid for in my home and I could get a decent, legal and worry-free stream.

The quality was never consistent and more often than not it was just muddy rather than being a clear picture.

After reading the claim about being able to stream for free, I tried to go look even though I was 99% sure there would be a catch that would prevent me from seeing anything. And what do you know: "Not available from your location."

This is important.

I live in New Zealand. As far as I am aware, there is not a single legal download/streaming service available in this country.

So our choices are...well, there aren't any really. It's piracy or nothing.

distribution via torrent seems like it'd be so much cheaper than maintaining the infrastructure to stream. How about a custom HBO torrent client that also serves as your authentication and encrypts the files on your drive so they can't be shared with non-subscribers?

I'd pay for that if it had a backlog of all HBO shows/movies and HBO would only need a few seedboxes for the obscure stuff.

After reading the claim about being able to stream for free, I tried to go look even though I was 99% sure there would be a catch that would prevent me from seeing anything. And what do you know: "Not available from your location."

This is important.

I live in New Zealand. As far as I am aware, there is not a single legal download/streaming service available in this country.

So our choices are...well, there aren't any really. It's piracy or nothing.

I was in the same boat as you here in Canada, although not as bad. We do get Netflix, PSN, iTunes, Google Play. However, we still get shafted as everything costs more, or in the case of Netflix, we get like 1/4 the content. This is easily solved with unblock-us though.

I'm not a shill for the company, there are several sites that offer the same service. You pay $5 a month and you can appear to be inside the US from any country in the world. You get access to everything US users do. It's very simple to use, all you have to do is register your ip (you can update this as much as you like if you are on the road or your ip changes), and change the dns setting on your device or router. I do it by device since if you do it on the router, you can't access Canadian sites like banking or cbc etc.

You also have the option to change it to the UK as well, so you can access BBC player and UK Netflix. UK, US, Can Netflix all have different titles. I watch everything I want to on US Netflix, switch back to Can for a few weeks, then to UK etc. It's awesome.

I think the business model is outdated. The industry still erects borders around what one can buy or rent and the pricing does not reflect a need to make a product available to the customer.

Just last time i looked up two movies i consider to buy. Solaris (2012) and Silent Running. To my surprise i can not get either for example on Blue Ray. Silent Running is available in Europe on Blue Ray.

Its think like this that drive me mad. There are thousands of movies (new&old) available on Blue Ray but movies like this i can not find.

On the streaming side i am happy that Amazon offered free streaming (with membership) to watch "Under the Dome". AT&T on demand only was holding the last 3 episodes.Netflix does not have it and i am not sure if they will get it.

In a sense i can understand why people use torrents or other means. Even though i don't. I wish for a solution but know that there will be nil.

Makes me ponder how much money the industry actually could generate with a more customer driven business model.

I think the one thing that people always leave out is the fact that even with digital rentals and streaming options, there will always be a person who can't afford it. It doesn't fit into their budget and they don't want to go without. It's not an excuse for their actions, just a reality that no one seems willing to accept.

Especially as content such as the latest movies are more than just personal enjoyment, it is also a group bonding focus. This by being able to discuss it with peers in social gatherings.

Firstly, there's no mention if the 500,000 piraters came from within or outside the US, likely because they don't know. I'm also betting (sadly I'm at work and can't test it) that AMC, like all other US TV websites, have location restrictions in place. That just doesn't tell me anything.

It's impossible to get a good rip of Mortal Instruments. Yes, you can go download it, but it's a cam that someone took in the theatre with muddy sound. That's not really comparable in my mind to an actual film. There will always be people who watch those but personally, even in my lower income/higher pirating days I never did because it's simply not worth it. You wait until a couple of weeks before the release date.

There will always be a leak of the DVD just before the release date, or someone will rip a digital copy in a hotel room, or whatever. With the current system it actually works ok for content providers, you can watch a good version in the cinema with the experience or watch a horrible cam rip up until a few weeks before the DVD comes out. Doing simultaneous DVD/cinematic releases will mean less revenue for them (since cinema tickets make more money) and better quality versions showing up on torrent sites earlier. They've set it up so they have control over the cinemas because that's the best place they can do it, and it works. But regardless of what the release date actually is for a film through it's digital/physical disk release there will be a pirated version up a couple of weeks before because it needs to be distributed.

And I can rent Pacific Rim in Canada quite easily, because it's "released" ($2.50 on the cineplex website today too, I really like their cheap tuesday movie thing). I can't purchase Monsters University because it's not available yet (Oct 29th is the release date, iTunes may say you can buy it but it's only a preorder). The research doesn't sound particularly well conducted.

I think the one thing that people always leave out is the fact that even with digital rentals and streaming options, there will always be a person who can't afford it. It doesn't fit into their budget and they don't want to go without. It's not an excuse for their actions, just a reality that no one seems willing to accept.

It'll surely curb it but there are people who just won't ever do so and that's what they need to take into account. Make it a part of the business model instead.

Degenerate pirates are just noise. There's nothing you can do about them so you might as well just ignore them. The problem is that content owners refuse to do this. The idea that any download is worth a full price media purchase is too pleasant a delusion.

A certain amount of piracy will be inevitable, unavoidable, and something that should just be ignored.